Life of a Wizard
by Glaivester
Summary: A series of vignettes explaining Galen's POV.
1. A Wizard's Thoughts

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A Wizard's Thoughts

by Glaivester

Disclaimer: It belongs to Warner Bros. and J. Michael Straczynski.

[A/N Some of the events herein come from _The Passing of the Technomages _trilogy by Jeanne Cavelos].

Well, well.

How amusing. How utterly and completely amusing.

Why, or why, did Gideon show me that movie?

Harry Potter? Harry Potter? Oh, so that is what being a wizard is like? Really?

Well, your parents die, there is no doubt about that. Oh yes. But there is no evil wizard behind it. No, they die because they killed each other. They hated each other and they damned well tried to use me as a weapon. One of them gave me a flipping weapon to use to kill the other, and of course I didn't know about it. And as a result I killed one of my best friends. A little girl. And I always thought it was an accident. But no, my parents killed each other.

Just one of the many startling and amusing revelation that have plagued me these last few years.

Oh, wizardry is all about doing wondrous things, and kindly old men, and there is always the school's leaders to fall back on. In reality, the head wizards give you a mission and then banish you because of it. And you find out that it's not just a few bad apples. Oh, no, wizards are actually all created expressly to do evil. To start wars, and to destroy planets, etc. etc.

I have killed many friends, or those I thought to be friends, and buried many more friends who were killed by others. Blaylock, Elric, Isabelle. 

And it turns out that maybe I AM Harry Potter in a sense. The chosen one. The one who gets to the meaning of it all. The one who finally brings balance by discovering the ultimate oneness with the tech. I discover how we can contact the "magic" directly, not having to utter spells, whether they be shapes, or equations, or knitting.

And what good does it do me? Oh, sorry, only the Shadows can grow the tech. They're gone and so no new technomages. It's been a good run. Sorry you had to die out.

And it's not enough that our days are limited. We are killing each other off.

Real wizardry is a lot more dark than anyone can imagine. Anyone who hasn't experienced it firsthand.

Why did Gideon have to show this? Why does he insist on doing things that dredge up memories of my parents? Of Isabelle? 

Sometimes, sometimes, I just want to end it all.

But too many are counting on me. Counting on me to help them save humanity.

Well, Isabelle, if there is something after death, I hope you are happy now. For I fear I will never be, and my only comfort is that somewhere, somehow, you exist. Your radiant smile somehow someway is still out there.

If I didn't somewhere in the recesses of my heart think that - I don't think I could go on.


	2. A Wizard's Worries

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Part 2: A Wizard's Worries

Disclaimer: It belongs to Warner Bros. and J. Michael Straczynski.

Who am I? What do I want? Where am I going? Whom do I serve?

Do I have any meaning in my life anymore. Sometimes in the dark of night I wonder if life would even have had meaning with Isabelle. Maybe I would still be living an existence as pointless ass I feel my current existence is. A happier one, but pointless nonetheless. I have always felt pointless. An answer without a question. drift, and obeying the whims of others, or the whims of my emotions when I get so bottled up I can't take it anymore.

Maybe not. I suppose I don't even see existence as pointless now, or else I would not go on. I would die and find out whether or not there is something on the other side to see. Whether I could rejoin Isabelle.

" To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;/ For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/ Must give us pause."

Hamlet. Act 3, Scene 1, Lines 64-67. I think. The last line I only took half of. But it expresses another dilemma. What if I were to die, and be separated eternally from Isabelle by the fires of Hell itself? I refuse to believe that she could be damned, or that I could not be.

And then there is the all-consuming fear. What if we fail? Our task is gargantuan. Save Earth from a for-all-purposes invincible virus. Or prion. Or whatever the plague actually is. And the worst fear of all, what if we do save them? Will it matter? Does God, or the universe, or whoever give a fig what happens to us? Worse than failure is the specter that success may be meaningless. 

Today we had some progress. The nanotech from that world destroyed by a fellow technomage - Eilerson may have cracked some of the code involved. We may be able to eventually reverse-engineer them so that we can make as many as we need or top modify them so they don't wear off, giving us permanent resistance. Or maybe turn them into a plague-killing cure.

This, of course, depressed me, as everything does. Everything purposeful, that is. I am afraid of purpose, that it may flee from me; that I may be on a quest that I relish completing, piece by piece, only to have it turn to ashes in my mouth at the end.

I remember the feeling. I was playing a war game with Carvin, Alwyn's Centauri apprentice. I worked for a year of strategizing to beat her, and then, when I did, I asked myself what I had won - nothing.

Is everyone this despairing, or is it just me?

Or maybe it is because they lied to me. To keep me from revealing the true power of the technomages, they told me that I had the power to perhaps destroy the entire universe. A lie, and they knew it a lie. But they wanted me to believe that I was more dangerous than an entire Shadow army. So don't use the one-equation spell, they told me. I was led to believe that everything was all the more pointless because I could destroy it all. They told me I had power like that of God... how the hell is a young man supposed to live with that? It is, I am told, bad to be an idolater. But how much worse to be an idol? I suppose I wasn't exactly considered a god... no one worshipped me - but to be told you wield such power, all to cover up the power you do wield... I feel like the technomages abused me, they were like the parents who tell their children that mommy will die if you're not good, terrifying you to keep you in line.

Oh, well. To live or to die... the former decision can always be corrected later, but the second choice is irreversible. I suppose I must continue... until I either find the courage to take my own life, or the courage to live it.


	3. A Wizard's Wants

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Part 3: A Wizard's Wants

Disclaimer: It belongs to Warner Bros. and J. Michael Straczynski.

Oh, so Gideon thinks he knows so much about me. How I moped about forever after Isabelle's death. Okay, so he probably doesn't know about Isabelle. But he thinks I am not flesh, that I am some sort of angel or demon or spirit above the affairs of the physical realm.

The fool.

Not too long after leaving my brothers, I embarked on a quest. A quest to find meaning in life. A quest that, truth be told, cost me my virginity and a lot more.

I wonder what it would have been like had Isabelle and I ever consummated our relationship. It felt so pure, so right, that I could have waited as long as necessary. But as it turns out, the choice was taken from me. She died, and I couldn't ever complete things in that respect. Nor have children. Of course, had she survived, our kids would not be able to be technomages, given the end of the source of our technology. But they would be our kids nonetheless, and I would have loved them.

But no, and so ultimately, life lost such meaning that I decided to take the meaning out of sex.

People would be surprised to hear about the encounters I had. A Minbari prostitute - oh yes, such things do exist, believe it or not. A female Narn general. The strangest, I suppose, was a Soul Hunter. Yes, they let their females go out to hunt souls, you just don't hear much about it. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better had one of them been there when Isabelle died. Would she have wanted to be preserved that way? I would have cherished her, but I somehow doubt that she would have been happy.

Nonetheless, I am more than a little hurt that no Soul Hunters came for her. Was she not good enough for them? Too little, too normal, too common? 'Twere I one of them, she would be the only soul I would ever need to take.

But it was strange. Mystical, I suppose. Lots of incense and chants. But the Soul Hunters really do know how to make the most of an experience. 

But none of it ever really produced happiness. Just endless sensation and search for more sensation to temporarily drown out my thinking processes and dull the pain.

So I finally ended it, and took upon myself a vow of chastity. Not a vow, more of a resolution. Like Blaylock, I have retreated from emotion and sensation. What is the use? Better to look out upon the void and admit the meaninglessness rather than to fight it or ignore it.

Sometimes I call out to the universe, why am I here? What does it all mean?

And then I have my answer. The universe tells me exactly what it all means.

Nothing. Silence.

I remember an old TV show about vampires. There was an older vampire, with a radio show. He always talked to the younger vampire through the show. One line stands out:

"If there is a God, must He be sane?"

So I rail against the meaninglessness of it all, in the end knowing that even railing so is meaningless.

[A/N the TV show is Forever Knight, by the way. I'm not really as much of a downer as this fic might suggest; this is just how I see Galen].


End file.
